Biking Viking Country

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Scott Smoot riding Iceland's Highway 1, the "Ring Road," virtually

Since May 15, I've biked 1600 miles around Atlanta. On the map of my virtual tour of the world, that distance takes me from Gander, Newfoundland to Reykjavik, Iceland, where Vikings settled over 1000 years ago.

In the photo, I'm joining a bike tour around Highway 1, Iceland's "Ring Road." I'm a little under-dressed, as the temperature in July is 13.5 Celsius, or 56 Fahrenheit.

Mom and Dad toured Iceland in 2000. They toured without their usual travel partners, my Uncle Jack and Aunt Blanch, who missed their plane. [Find what I've posted about them all at my Family Corner.] Mom's postcard shows a little disappointment -- "The weather was clear 1 of the 3 days" -- but Dad, the geologist, got a kick from seeing roads paved with lava, inspecting a geothermal power station, and experiencing a magnitude 6.2 earthquake -- which, Mom says, they did not feel. Though I've never been to Iceland, I can use the transitive property to include it on my itinerary of "places I've lived or loved."

You may wonder how I reached the island on a bike. The apposite principle of physics, discovered by DC Comics, is explained in Biking to Iceland (06/2022).

 

 

1600 miles from Newfoundland to Iceland
May 15 - July 30, 2022

←← | ← || → Use the arrows to follow the entire bike tour from the beinning.

Poems from July

In retirement, I'm sticking to the classroom routine that enabled 7th graders to produce poems that surprised them and delighted me. The 7th graders themselves are a subject in this month's poems. As always, images by artist Susan Rouse complement each post. One of those is included here. Here are my poems from July posted to my blog First Verse, plus one about a morning last July:

• Angels Never Know true heaven
• Dear 7th Grade learning in a pandemic
• Wingtips a grandmother's magic
• Atlanta, Sunrise Saturday dramas glimpsed on Freedom Trail by a passing cyclist

"Nope": Mares and Nightmares

Horses appear throughout Jordan Peele's latest horror-thriller Nope, but the first animal we see is in a flashback to a chimpanzee covered in blood on the set of a TV sitcom of the 1990s. The connection between that incident and the main story is never made explicit. That's part of what makes Peele's work stick: in the night and morning since I saw Nope, I've been seeing it in my head, thinking, shuddering, and smiling. [UPDATE: two more days of same.]

[Much of what I wrote about Jordan Peele's previous movie could be said about this one, too. See Is Jordan Peele's Us US?]

About the chimp, we have a clear connection to a child actor Ricky "Jupe" Park on the set of the doomed show. Jupe (Steven Yeun), now a grownup, runs a cheesy Western-theme park close to the ranch where most of the action takes place. He puts on a show for live audiences that he calls "Star Lasso." But why is he even in the movie? My friend Susan has a theory: trained animals go rogue in both stories. There's a principle reiterated by horse-trainer OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya), "Don't look them in the eye." Also, she observed, balloons are involved.

(The day after I posted this, I suddenly understood why Ricky calls his show "Star Lasso." Peele only implies the answer. Wise choice. Had I known, I wouldn't have gone to see the movie.)

Comments in the media have centered on the themes of film and fame. Haywood and his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) train horses for film studios. When they become aware that a hill overlooking their ranch has become HQ for a UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, a.k.a. UFO), their first thought is to monetize it. Every other character has the same idea. Peele's epigraph is from the Old Testament, Nahum's prophecy that the destruction of the Assyrian capital Nineveh will be "a spectacle."

The image that made me laugh and clutch my armrest at the same time, every time, was the split-second glimpse of a UAP as it darts from one cloud to another like Bugs Bunny ducking from tree to tree to evade Elmer Fudd. But when it dives in for its close-up, it's just scary.

Another image I won't forget is the view from inside the ranch house during a downpour, when the rain mixes with blood. Then there's the heart-stopping moment in flashback when the chimp, paused in his rampage, turns towards the young Jupe's hiding place.

Other images I list just for my own future reference. To explain would give too much away. There's a motorcyclist in a full-head reflective helmet with only a cyclops lens for a visor, and there's what happens when an alien force suddenly saps all the power from his bike. There's a giant inflatable cowboy. There are the air-blown "dancing men" that wriggle up and down at roadside attractions, and the moment that we suddenly understand why OJ and his team have stolen dozens of them to scatter all over their ranch. There's a fiberglass horse attached to a string of multi-colored pennants, and there's the use OJ makes of it.

I wasn't sure how much I was enjoying the movie before OJ and Em brought in allies -- a whacked-out technician from a big box store, and a raspy-voiced cinematographer. It took a while for me to appreciate the siblings' comic banter, i.e., she banters, he grunts. When we see the team enacting their plan to capture their visitor on film -- and, by the way, save humanity -- I was roped in.

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris: Beauty and Kindness

"This is your lucky day!" says the title character in Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, and she makes it so for others. Her kindness comes back around for her, too.

Leslie Manville stars in the new film directed by Anthony Fabian (sharing writing credits with Carroll Cartwright, Keith Thompson, and Olivia Hetreed) from the novel by Paul Gallico.

My friend Susan was struck by the convergence in Mrs. Harris of both kindness and a love of beauty. Ada Harris is a war widow in late-1950s London who cleans homes to make her modest living. A gorgeous Dior gown in one lady's wardrobe gives Mrs. Harris a new goal in life, to buy a "frock" for herself from the house of Dior in Paris. Through luck and pluck, she gets to Paris.

But Paris reeks of trash from a sanitation workers' strike, while Dior's high-end customers fail to pay their high-end bills. Here, too, Mrs. Harris cleans up others' messes through empathy and her courage to stand up herself and for others who are treated unfairly.

Among the characters she helps are Dior's young financial officer Fauvel (Lucas Bravo) and one of Dior's models Natasha (Alba Baptista). While they team up to assist her, she tries to nudge them into relationship. But the real matchmaker is Jean-Paul Sartre: the two beautiful young people bond over the philosopher's Being and Nothingness.

Not being seen as you really are is a theme in Sartre that emerges naturally from a story about high fashion. Judged by her modest appearance, Mrs. Harris is at first excluded by Dior's assistant Claudine Colbert (Isabelle Huppert). Others in the story who have the accoutrements of class are crass cheapskates. One character who calls Mrs. Harris "nobody" admits her true self is "invisible". Even a film in which the character Natasha appears is called Invisible Amour.

The apotheosis of that theme is the man who tells Mrs. Harris that her beauty is something in her, not what she wears.

This gentle comedy is scored by Rael Jones with sensitivity and a nod to the use of strings in the pop music of the 1950s. The main theme is a wistful waltz. Jones meets the challenge presented by a fashion show, where each model projects a different image, building to the dress that tops them all.

When you see the film, well, that's your lucky day.

BIrthday Ride, 63 miles for 63 years

Note for next time: it was a good idea to park midway in the Silver Comet Trail's first 25 miles, ride east, then west, then to take lunch break at the car at 50 miles. The last 13 miles were a piece of cake.

Remembering Jack C. Maier, 1925-2005

Jack, left, with his very young uncle Frank, and going to war

On this blog, I've written memorials for members of the generations that were the loving grownups for me and my siblings. But Uncle Jack C. Maier died just before I started to blog.

Details of his life and career were covered in many publications at the time of his death. He was a prominent businessman, joining his father-in-law Dave Frisch in building the Big Boy Restaurants from a local Cincinnati eatery to a nationally recognized brand. I remember also that he competed in horse shows, flew his own plane, and assisted my father in starting a business.

For more personal memories of Uncle Jack, I can do no better than my brother's letter to our Aunt Blanche. Our father Tom Smoot read the letter aloud in his eulogy for Jack at a service in Cincinnati on Friday, February 4, 2005.

Blanche,

The sad news of Jack passing this morning did not come as a shock, but the news brought an immediate rush of loss to us all. Today is a sad day to all that have been fortunate to have been taken under his wing. There is the loss of a husband and brother to two strong women. There is the loss of a father to all the children that your family raised. There is the loss of a man who balanced authority with love, intelligence with humor and determination with humility.

My summers spent in Cincinnati where always a special time for me. The Monday Night Dinners, days at the farm, cross country trips, playing tennis, playing golf, going the a Red's game or simply seating in the kitchen are all vivid, happy memories for me - and Uncle Jack is a part of each memory. He was not actively in each event, but his presence was felt at all times in Cincinnati. I never wanted to displease Uncle Jack - his approval was always needed and desired.

As we have gotten older, I have an even greater respect for what you two accomplished as husband and wife. I look at the strength of your family. I look at determination against odds that members of your family have faced and beaten. No doubt the love that binds your family offers the will to overcome. The love that started with you and Jack has multiplied with each child, each grandchild and I dare say with a few nephews and nieces.

Please know that the love that started with you and Jack will now come full circle and embrace you with all of the power and grace begun with you two.

Please know that Uncle Jack will always be with me - and I am a better person because of him. I will miss Jack, but I will never be without him.

Love to you and the whole family... Todd L. Smoot

(l-r) Frances M. Smoot, her older brother Jack Maier and his wife Blanche, ca. 1975

Accessible Art

Percy Shelley, poet mentioned in williez's blog

My article about Billy Collins Ten Poems too Many? (06/2006) is one of my all-time biggest hits, drawing more comments than any other.

Re-reading my response to a reader named williez, I think it's worth elevating to full blogpost status:

This question of "accessibility" comes up a lot in all the things I love, not just in poetry. Stephen Sondheim's musicals have been commercial flops and "inaccessible"; symphonic composers of the mid-20th century fell into opposing camps - those who continued to use rhythm, melody, and harmony to create dramatic or beautiful effects, and the others who aimed for a purity of technique unsullied by emotion - typified by Milton Babbitt's famous question to the public, "Who cares if you listen?" (surprise! He was Stephen Sondheim's tutor.)

Your response made me wonder at this part: Popular poetry rehashes an outmoded aesthetic: the single-subject "I," the "poem-as-truth," the "look how observant and sensitive I am," the "open-a-vein-and-let-my-truth-spill-out" hokeyness.

When I do connect to a poem, I would like to think it's because the writer has found a way -- be it an image, an anecdote, a bit of rhetoric -- to express something that I didn't know I knew and recognize immediately to be true.

I, too, can't stand the stuff that's all about "me, the poet." But I like the stuff about the poet's world that, deep down, is about me, too.

 [See a curated list of my blogposts about Collins and many other poets at my page Poetry and Secular Psalms.   I've been posting poetry of my own at a blog I call First Verse.  Yes, it's drawn from my experience. And, yes, it's accessible.]

One More American Gothic Parody for July 4th Weekend

My sister Kim and I were sending a photo to our nephew Craig, when I noticed some resemblance to Grant Wood's famous oil painting of another brother and sister back around 1930.

I found a photo of the original home on Wikipedia. Paint 3D isolated figures, including the farming implement. BeFunky.com helped me to make an oil painting of the result.

The Cork O'Connor Mysteries, Books 1 - 10: Still Growing

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Author William Kent Krueger bucks a trend with his series featuring Corcoran "Cork" O'Connor. Other authors have burdened their detectives with ever darker personal problems and self doubts as their sequels piled up. But Krueger started with Cork climbing out of a personal hole, reconciling with his family, and taking care of himself. After I read the third book, I hoped that this "Cork" would "stay buoyant."

I'm happy to report that, at least by the end of book 10, through setbacks, ordeals, and heartbreak, Cork is still learning and growing, along with friends and family.

Cork and his wife Jo have learned parenting on the go. They help their teenage daughters Jenny and Anna be true to their own convictions, no matter what an angry youth minister or fickle boyfriend may say. Jo and Cork take special care with their youngest, Stephen. They don't dismiss his nighttime panics but stay with him. Giving him dogs to care for helps him to mature. By the ninth book Heaven's Keep, Stephen is in his early teens, showing strongly the Ojibwe side of his heritage. When Jo goes missing, Cork lets his young son participate fully in an arduous search.

Cork, through trial and error, is finding his niche where he grew up in Aurora, Minnesota. Son of the late sheriff, he was sheriff for a time, but lost the position. In these books, we see him sheriff again, and we see him decide that's not what he loves to do. When he becomes an official P.I. for his wife's law firm, others who take on the sheriff's position become foils or friends. There's an officious politician in the job, then conscientious old Wally Shanno. Officer Marsha Dross, promoted by Cork himself, once took a bullet for Cork. The partnership of Cork and Dross, characterized by mutual respect and official conflicts of interest, is one of the joys of the series. He is also working through his complex relationship with guns, deciding at one point to give them up, then doubting his decision.

Spiritually, Cork draws more and more on his Ojibwe mentors Henry Meloux and the late Sam Winter Moon. Aside from wisdom we could call secular, they have given him wisdom through myth. More than once, Cork seems to confront a "Windigo," an evil spirit that you can defeat only by becoming a Windigo yourself. More than once, Cork, Henry, and young Stephen have visions that presage events. When Cork asks Henry why visions are always so obscure, I love Henry's answer: like an arrow, the vision goes straight to the target, while we have to follow along behind at a slow pace to get to the point.

The Catholic church has more negative baggage for Cork, but the faith grows in importance throughout these books. Priests in the series include a weak man, a predator, and Father Mal, who leaves the collar to marry Cork's sister-in-law Rose, the beginning of a wholesome new life for both of them. Jesus himself appears in Blood Hollow, bringing peace and healing power to a young Ojibwe man Solemn Winter Moon -- the prime suspect in a murder case. While Annie seems aimed at living a life of devotion, her little brother says "it's all b---s---." While Cork seems to be returning to the church, his Ojibwe mentor Henry integrates both traditions by defining "soul" as "connection with our Creator and deep awareness of our connection with all things created by Him."

There's additional pleasure in Krueger's stretching himself by changing up the expected detective-chases-criminal pattern. He makes Cork the target in Mercy Falls. On the lam far from home in Copper River, Cork recedes to the background for a very affecting story of three teenage outcasts facing violence. Krueger tries first person narrative in Thunder Bay, and he builds his present-day adventure around a saga from Henry Meloux's remote past. Red Knife involves organized gangs. The author's challenge in Heaven's Keep is to maintain interest in a search-and-rescue mission that we already know is doomed. In book 10, Vermilion Drift, Krueger achieves the kind of bizarre twist that Agatha Christie favored: Cork finds a missing person deep in a mine shaft alongside bodies of Ojibwe women whose disappearances were investigated by his father fifty years earlier. The twist? Fifty years apart, the same gun was used in all the killings.

Krueger's particular strengths show up in all of these books. We know in each book that there will be strenuous adventures where nature is both beautiful and dangerous. We're in a blizzard, lost in woods, climbing mountains, being tracked by a wounded cougar, or sneaking across a lake to an enemy's fortified estate. Krueger also has a gift for making us feel the vulnerability of adolescents. Besides Cork's children and Solemn Winter Moon, there are the friends Ren, Charlene ("Charlie"), and Stash in Copper River, a musician named Ulysses ("Uly") in Red Knife who has lost his older brother to gang violence, and, in Vermilion Drift, flashbacks to young Cork himself, in conflict with his father.

I'm eager to catch up to Krueger through the next ten books! ←← | ← || → Use the arrows to follow the entire series in sequence.